Avoiding The Train Wreck

Tracey and I should be at the game right now with a married couple, who are friends with her (and in turn me), but one of them threw their back out and the other (who had the tickets) was stuck working in the city. It was too confusing to relay the tickets to us and have the worker husband travel to Lockport to tend to his ailing wife.

In the end, they were free tickets (to us anyway) and there is nothing lost because no money or time (of ours) was wasted.

I always have a fun time at U.S. Cellular Field and tonight would have been no exception. I could have witnessed something that is said to be rarer than a perfect game; an Alex Rios home run in a White Sox uniform. I could have seen Gordon Beckham hit a home run too. I saw those just fine on television.

It's just not the White Sox team's year. I'm OK with that. I just wish they would have come to that conclusion a while ago. I know how tempting the division looked. I know how on paper everything looked wonderful. Teams don't live on paper. They live on the field.

Who knew that many of the hitters and many of the bullpen would collectively have their worst seasons? Nobody plans that. Some of it was dumb luck. Some of it was injury. Some of it was, well... fill in your own homemade excuse.

I think the Sox hitters and the bullpen decided to let the Tigers and Twins battle it out for the honor to get swept in the first round. This division was bad this year. Fruit flies have a longer shelf life than all of the teams in the AL Central in 2009.

This division was for the Sox to take. The one thing that really hurt this season was that the team could never put together a run. Even the Nationals had a run. The White Sox never did. If that had happened this year, the Sox would be looking back in first place.

I'll still reserve my official concession of the division when the Sox are mathematically eliminated, but it's been over all season. In any other division, the Sox would be playing Tyler Flowers instead of Ramon Castro. The majority of the ailing starters would be shut down and rookies would audition for 2010. Not in this lousy division.

If the Sox play their cards right, they could have the season wrapped up by Thursday. I'm still OK with that. It just was never the year for the White Sox. Here's to 2010 and I pity the AL Central team who heads to the first round this year.